More grandstanding by the Democrats. Ehrilich was right to try and get Medicaid costs under control. An open-ended entitlement like Medicaid is a serious financial nightmare. If we expand coverage like the Democrats want we will soon be facing ever-increasing expenditures that will squeeze out money for other programs. Look at what happened in Tennessee when they expanded the program -- after a few years it became too expensive and they had to institute massive cuts.

MK, you know nothing about health economics. For starters, do you even have a clue about the relative cost between Medicaid expenditures, Medicare expenditures, and the tax break for 3rd party insurance? Do you know how much the Tennessee system was in deficit? Do you know how many people it served at what cost? TennCare failed but it was more to do with the particular politics of Tennessee and the corruption in the system than the generosity of its benefits. You just repeat BS talking points.

Actually, I've worked on Medicaid policy for the past three years, so I do indeed know quite a bit about how it works. And I know that current Medicaid expenditures, at both the state (or local, depending on the state) and national level are unsustainable. We need to find ways to limit its growth right now or we'll be faced with huge cuts in service in the near future. If we can find a way to contain costs now, perhaps those catastrophic cuts don't need to happen.

I'd just point out that what the Democrats are doing here isn't expanding coverage, as MK as said. It's restoring coverage that was thoughtlessly and heartlessly taken from people who are here legally. Ehrlich's cutting them out of the program was nothing more than taking advantage of those with the smallest and least vocal voice.

Let's see -- if a group of people aren't receiving Medicaid now and the Democrats want them to begin receiving it, I think that qualifies as an expansion. It's irresponsible to be expanding coverage in this program. It's already too expensive. Both parties should be finding ways to contain costs, not expand them. Those who advocate more Medicaid coverage are simply ignoring the fact that soon we will be unable to pay for the costs of the program and the government will be forced to dramatically limit coverage. It's better to start addressing this now so that it's not so harsh when it happens.

You know, MK, if you'd tried reading the article from last week - here's the link http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021602319.html - you'd see that Democrats are attempting to restore funding that was cut.

The second paragraph begins: "Yet when Maryland cut $7 million last year and eliminated health care coverage for some recent immigrants, surgery was canceled on Eelaaf Zahid's malformed hip."

Gee, I dunno, sounds like those damned Democrats are trying to expand nothing to me. It sounds more like restoring to me.

This is what's amazing about the conservative mindset. Restoring something to what it was is always labeled as expanding. You know, if temporary tax cuts are allowed to return to pre-TEMPORARY levels, then its suddenly called a tax increase. That's utter non-sense, and so is calling this restoration an expansion.

Fine, call it what you will, but my point still stands. Under the Democrats plan, Medicaid expenditures will go up. Whether they are restoring a previous level of coverage or simply expanding the program, they are making the program more expensive than it is now. That's the wrong direction we should be headed with Medicaid.

MK, if you know this stuff then your assertions are worse than ignorance, you are actively trying to mislead. Your response pointed out the key is cutting costs. If you know anything about health economics then you know that costs are rising exponentially (for a variety of reasons) while any expansion of benificiaries would only be an arithmetic increase. On the other hand, addressing the healthcare/industrial complex of physicians, hospitals, and drug companies and figuring out a way to deliver cost effective healthcare is a whole lot harder and politically risky than cutting people from the roles expecially if you can portray them as undeserving freeloaders.

I agree that the health care system needs to be reformed. If that happens the costs of the Medicaid program would slow quite a bit. However, we should not throw up our hands over Medicaid costs simply because there is other work to do, too. It's irresponsible to add more eligible populations to the system right now. Eligibility should be limited. If it's not, we're facing a crisis in a decade or so. Sure, we'll probably face a crisis anyway, but we need to do all we can to minimize that. The Democrats don't quite seem to grasp that concept.

rolls, not roles. MK, you neglected to address the cost of Medicare and the tax subsidies for healthcare. Medicaid is the least expensive of these three and yet serves the neediest. Also, with EMTALA, it's hardly likely that this kind of plan is going to result in anything other than mostly inefficient cost shifting.